The St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, Ship it on the Frisco!

The St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, commonly known as simply the
"Frisco" has a storied history of two halves. During the railroad’s
first 60 years it had a very interesting and tumultuous history going
through a number of name changes and bankruptcies (resulting in so many
names). However, after its final name as the St. Louis-San Francisco
Railway, the railroad did quite well and prospered for its last 60+
years of operation before becoming part of the large Burlington Northern
system in the very early 1980s. While the SLSF's original intentions of reaching the west coast were never realized (hence, the "San Francisco" in its name) the road nevertheless went on to stretch out across much of the Midwest as well as into the South reaching St. Louis, Dallas, Kansas City, Memphis, and even the western panhandle of Florida at Pensacola.

The Frisco’s story began in 1849 when the Pacific Railroad was chartered by the State of Missouri.
The Pacific Railroad, as you might know, itself would go on to form
the later Missouri Pacific which today is part of the Union Pacific
system. The SLSF's link to the PR is a line it constructed known as
the South-West Branch, built to connect today’s Pacific, Missouri with
Rolla. Interestingly this line would later become its own railroad
known as the Southwest Pacific Railroad when it was sold to General John
Fremont from the State of Missouri. From this point the history becomes extremely complicated up
until its final name change as the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway.
Fremont’s ownership of the line was brief as he defaulted on its payments and it was reorganized
as the South Pacific Railroad in 1868, and just two years later was
again renamed this time as the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad! Also
unable to become profitable it again entered receivership, sold, and emerged in 1876 as the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway.

Soon the railroad was stretching out across not only Missouri but
also Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas by the late 19th century. While the
Frisco would indeed serve St. Louis as its name implies it would never
reach the Pacific Coast and San Francisco or California at all for that
matter. It’s predecessor, the A&P, was originally planned to do
just this and the new St. Louis & San Francisco carried through with
these plans but was thwarted by
the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific in the late 19th century. That story
in itself is quite complicated but in short Santa Fe wound up
controlling the SL&SF in 1890 but was forced to spin it off just two
years later in lieu of the 1893 stock market panic that caused both railroads to fall into bankruptcy.

Once again independent and now known as the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad the company
lost its rail line into California and would remain a Midwestern road
serving points to the south and southwest for the rest of its life,
never reaching the coast as its name implied. Still struggling by the
early 20th century the railroad again fell into receivership,
this time in 1913. It reemerged in 1916 as the St. Louis-San Francisco
Railway, as it is best known today. For the next roughly 30 years the railroad pressed on and actually did
quite well upgrading its lines and even signaling a large section of its
railroad. This attention to its physical plant would pay off when it
fell into yet another bankruptcy during the Great Depression. While it would take the railroad until 1947 to emerge from its final receivership it exited a well-maintained, upgraded railroad very ready for the future.

The SLSF’s attention to its property would carry on throughout the
rest of its life and a driving force behind shedding its history as a bankrupt-prone
company to one that earned healthy profits and revenues. This began in
the 1950s when it opened a high tech “Hump” yard in Memphis (whereby an
inclined track and computer-controlled switches guided cars into their
correct staging track), expedited freight trains across its major markets, consolidating
operations, began run-through freights with other carriers (which meant
Frisco locomotives were used to haul a train across foreign rails and
vice-versa, known as “pooling” or “pooling power”) and was able to rid
itself of its money-losing passenger operations in the late 1960s (while
it always maintained its passenger operations with class the Frisco
understood it was a losing battle and protested the ICC until it was
able to drop all passenger service, the first large railroad to do so
before Amtrak in 1971).

Frisco's Fleet Of Passenger Trains

Black Gold: (Tulsa - Fort Worth)

Firefly: (Tulsa - Oklahoma City)

Kansas City-Florida Special: (Kansas City - Jacksonville)

Memphian: (St. Louis - Memphis)

Meteor: (St. Louis - Oklahoma City/Fort Smith)

Oklahoman: Originally connected Kansas City and Tulsa and later served St. Louis and Oklahoma City.

Perhaps the largest boost to the Frisco began in the 1960s and 1970s when industries began moving
to the south and the regions it served whereby it not only diversified
the railroad’s traffic base but also increased it exponentially! Of
course, as is almost always the case, success does not go unnoticed and
as the railroad prospered other larger lines began taking interest,
eventually being purchased by the Burlington Northern in 1980.
BN ultimately chose to acquire the Frisco thanks to its much more diversified traffic base, which extended the burgeoning Class I into the
southeastern regions of Memphis, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and the
Gulf Coast (which today contains very lucrative chemical traffic
business). While the Frisco’s corporate history ended in the late fall of 1980 its
legacy certainly lives on under the now-BNSF Railway as an important
artery to the Gulf Coast and Southeastern regions.

Diesel Locomotive Roster

The American Locomotive Company

Model Type

Road Number

Date Built

Quantity

S2

290-294

1948-1949

5

RS2

550-554

1949

5

FA-1

5300-5315

1948-1949

16

The Baldwin Locomotive Works

Model Type

Road Number

Date Built

Quantity

VO-1000

200-237

1941-1946

38

DS-4-4-1000

238-241

1948

4

VO-660

600-601

1942

2

Electro-Motive Division

Model Type

Road Number

Date Built

Quantity

GP15-1

100-124

1977

25

NW2

250-265

1948-1949

16

SD38-2

296-299

1979

4

SW7

300-304

1950-1951

5

SW9

305-314

1952

10

SW1500

315-360

1968-1973

56

MP15DC

361-365

1975

5

GP38-2

400-478, 663-699

1972-1976

116

GP7

500-632

1950-1952

133

GP38AC

633-662

1971

30

GP35

700-732

1964-1965

33

GP40-2

750-774

1979

25

SD45

900-948

1967-1969

49

SD40-2

950-957

1978

8

E7A

2000-2005

1947

6

E8A

2006-2022

1950

17

F3A

5000-5017

1948

18

F3B

5100-5117

1948

18

F7A

5018-5039

1949-1950

22

F7B

5118-5139

1949-1952

22

FP7

5040-5051

1950-1951

12

F9B

5140-5144

1954

5

Fairbanks Morse

Model Type

Road Number

Date Built

Quantity

H10-44

270-281

1948-1949

12

H12-44

282-285

1951

4

General Electric

Model Type

Road Number

Date Built

Quantity

44-Tonner

4-8

1943-1944

5

U25B

800-831

1961-1966

32

U30B

832-862

1968-1975

31

Steam Locomotive Roster

Class

Type

Wheel Arrangement

1

Santa Fe

2-10-2

40 (Various), 50 (Various), 65, 98, 100 (Various), 200 (Various)

American

4-4-0

100 (Various), 410, 500 (Various), 600 (Various), 700 (Various)

Ten-Wheeler

4-6-0

300 (Various)

Mogul

2-6-0

700 (Various), 800 (Various), 970, 1200 (Various)

Consolidation

2-8-0

1000 (Various)

Mogul

4-6-2

1060

Hudson

4-6-4

1613

Decapod

2-10-0

2001

Chesapeake

2-8-8-2

4300, 4400, T-54

Mountain

4-8-2

4500

Northern

4-8-4

T (Various)

Mikado

2-8-2

For more reading on the Frisco consider Mike Schafer's Classic American Railroads Volume III. This book, the latest in the series, was published in 2003 and follows up on his original titles, Classic American Railroads and More Classic American Railroads,
both of which cover several fabled and well remembered fallen flags (of
which the Frisco is covered in the third volume). I own all three in
this series and can attest to their high quality, so I am sure you won't
be disappointed if you decide to purchase one. If you're interested in
perhaps purchasing this book please visit the link above which will
take you to ordering information through Amazon.com.

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